Having lived in this town my whole life I can tell you it used to be an even bigger deal if that is even humanly possible. I used to get free tickets handed to me all through school. We would talk about it for days in school and the cool kids all went. I have never been personally, but it is a sought after event here. Everyone wants to go and it is giant mess downtown when the event is going on. The closest I have ever been to going to the event is flagging for the mass amount of traffic that comes pouring out of the stadium after the event is officially over every night. Just driving through this town you can see the lack of good driving skills, but if you want to be truly amazed by the lack of common sense and decency, come watch the absolute chaos that happens when you shut down one of the busiest intersections in town and force people to go in a direction that they don't think they want to go. It is truly a life changing experience.
However, most here don't have quite the jaded opinion of the whole thing as I do. I may be a little biased based on the insanity that I have dealt with because of the event descending upon the town every year, however it is a great thing for the feel of the community and for the economy.